No Joke: Greens Embrace Putin

By JOHN FUND – October 16, 2022 8:27 PM

October 16, 2022 8:27 PM

He’s their pick for the top power player advancing Europe’s green agenda.

We thought we’d seen greenies praise all kinds of authoritarian moves to further their agenda. But Politico Europe, a well-read publication by elites who are marinated in green politics, has outdone everyone by having Vladimir Putin top its annual Green 28, a list of “the 28 power players behind Europe’s green agenda.”

Politico argues vigorously for its choice of Putin, such that it convinced me that it’s not joking. The magazine claims that the war in Ukraine has been great for the environment because it “forced Europe to finally break its fossil fuel addiction” and helped speed up the continent’s “green revolution.”

By launching his brutal invasion and manipulating energy markets to keep oil prices high, Putin has “achieved something generations of green campaigners could not,” Politico explains.

Clean energy is now a fundamental matter of European security. . . . Putin invaded Ukraine after the EU had spent two years laying the foundations of its Green Deal program for zeroing out emissions by 2050. That meant the policy machinery for a total remake of the European energy economy was already moving. All it needed was a nudge.

It notes that the European Commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, responded to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine by calling for Europe to “massively invest in renewables,” a dubious short-term course given the limitations of wind and solar technology.

I don’t know which is more deranged. Supporting Putin’s murderous attack on Ukraine or cheering on Europe’s green new deal, which has thrust Europe into an energy crisis, with energy rationing, power outages, $10-a-gallon gas, and a return to burning wood for home-heating purposes. To avoid blackouts, Germany must keep open nuclear plants that were scheduled to close in December. It’s a return to a new form of the Dark Ages in Europe.